Tutorial organized in collaboration with IEEE VR 2026 - Daegu, Korea March 21-25 2026
Organizer: Manuela Chessa - University of Genoa, Italy
Venue: Daegu, Korea - Sunday, March 22 - Room 2 (325B)
Target Audience: Students, academic researchers, and industry professionals interested in the transfer of XR solutions to clinical practice, with an intermediate level in VR/AR development.
Summary: This tutorial presents the key findings and challenges in translating VR/XR research into clinical practice, particularly in rehabilitation.
Indeed, interest in developing VR solutions for healthcare is continually growing, as evidenced by the increasing number of paper submissions to international conferences and journals, organized workshops, and dedicated conferences. However, the widespread adoption of such technologies in clinical settings remains limited. In parallel, another community is facing the same challenges, i.e., robotics. Moreover, in this context, XR solutions may complement robotics, forming, together with Artificial Intelligence, a comprehensive ecosystem of digital allies for healthcare.
This tutorial will present practical examples of XR solutions for rehabilitation, describing the specific challenges and the technical solutions adopted to address specific clinical aspects, along with an overview of the regulations and requirements for adopting such solutions in clinical practice.
As a specific use case, technical examples will be taken from the Fit For Medical Robotics (Fit4MedRob - https://www.fit4medrob.it/) Project, which aims to fill the “lab-real context” gap, putting together the major research centers in Italy, active in the development of innovative robotics and XR solutions for healthcare, and the main clinical centers and hospitals, with the main aim of improving the clinical outcome of physical rehabilitation and personal care treatments in a sustainable manner.
Program (tentative):
a. State of the art of XR solutions for healthcare: visualization and interaction modalities and applications. In this first part of the tutorial, I will briefly review the existing solutions from the literature, focusing on the choice of interaction techniques (e.g., wearable vs non-wearable) and of visualization modalities (e.g., immersive vs non-immersive) [45 mins]
b. Open issues and challenges in XR for healthcare: analysis of the adoption of XR solutions in the healthcare panorama and the gap between engagement and effectiveness. In this second part of the tutorial, I will discuss the existing gaps between the available technologies in VR and Computer Graphics research and the actual requirements of clinicians. [45 mins]
c. XR and robotics: state of the art, challenges, opportunities, and use cases from the Fit4MedRob project - data management, data analytics, and interoperability. The third part of the tutorial will introduce use cases for the Fit4MedRob project to discuss the complexity of data management and analysis across scenarios in which different specialists may have access to heterogeneous data, ranging from the patient's clinical status to prescriptions, and including machine data from robots and XR. I will present a theoretical data management architecture, and some implementations that consider interoperability and privacy issues [45 mins]
d. The route from the lab to the clinic: user evaluation, explanatory and clinical trials - regulations, issues and lessons learnt from the Fit4MedRob project. In the final part of the tutorial, I will present the steps necessary to obtain the status of medical devices, focusing on the issues and difficulties, and I will share lessons learnt from the Fit4MedRob project, aiming to distill take-home messages for the effective deployment of XR solutions in clinical practice. [45 mins]
The tutorial is supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Research, under the complementary actions to the NRRP “Fit4MedRob - Fit for Medical Robotics” Grant (#PNC0000007), the PRIN2022 BRAVE project (project code n. 2022PTSX4L), and the Ulysseus Seed Funding Programme for Joint Research and Innovation Groups.